mikao's world

"Hello, I'm 26, and I'm Retired"

Or at least that's what I felt like when I woke up this morning and had no schedule to attend to and realized that I have not really had any commitments at all since April 1st. But I don't think most retirees wake up with a student loan debt.

The past two years, being a graduate student in a seminary that offered modular courses, I've had a lot of free time. The beauty and sheer genius of the modular class system means you have a few pre-course homework assignments, then class for a week 8:30am-4pm, and then one or two post-course assignments that aren't due for two solid months after the first day of class.

Sure there are a few students who spent every Monday to Friday in their own personal rented cubicle in the library reading and writing. But me, on the other hand, I have an aversion to the mere word "cubicle." The only time I ever went to the library was to use the free internet or to grab a few books for an assignment I was working on at my house. Other than that, the only thing I went to the library was to socialize.

I'm a procrastinator at heart. Down to the core. All my best thinking and comprehending and writing comes at the last minute. All those personality tests and Myers-Briggs tell me that I take forever to make a decision. Yeah, that's right, I take forever because I need that last moment push to make it. Most of my assignments I didn't start a week before they were due, usually when writing a paper I would only start a day or two before it was due (except for my MRRP, it took a bit longer than that!).

College life was perfect for me because it gave me a schedule in which to follow. I had classes to go to and assignments that were due at pretty regular intervals for the most part. And in dorm I had meals at scheduled times and curfew to come in by.

Seminary life was a bit harder to adjust to. My schedule was a lot more broad and flexible and free flowing the weeks I didn't have class. I could wake up whenever I wanted to and do homework or hang out with people or spend three hours on the internet or do absolutely nothing at all if I wanted to.

In the month and a half I've had since completing all of my course requirements, I've not really accomplished anything concrete. I packed up my scholarly existence and physical things and moved back home for a month. I take my time getting up and getting ready for the day, I take my time eating and checking my email and walking outside and hanging out with our animals and watching the television shows I like to watch and leading a leisurely existence. But I haven't had a real imposed schedule to follow.

In thirteen days I'm starting my summer job. I love my job.

But it only lasts twelve weeks.

After that I'm headed out into the great unknown. No more fake adulthood, no more "adultolescence," no more student discounts, no more safety net of a perfectly planned existence of classes and semestered living with set schedules.

I've procrastinated long enough. I'll have to find a job and somewhere to live and eek out a living. I'll have to start paying real bills with real money that I've somehow worked to earn. I'll have to learn what it's really like to punch a timecard and struggle to pay for all the "neccessities" of life like food and telephone bills and electricity and toilet paper and seven years of post secondary education, and learn to live without things I can't afford like new CDs and strawberry marshmellows and V8 juice and mortadella sandwiches. I'll have to figure out really how to schedule my time for myself around the imposed responsibilities of life.

It's a moment I've been preparing for for the last several years, yet never really believed would actually come. Yet, in around 94 days, there it will be, staring me in the face.

And there alone I'll be, staring back at it.